 Hello! This in-class meeting focuses on the transcription of received pronunciation and requires that students understand, first of all, what phonemes are and secondly, how phonetic transcription works. If students do not feel confident in any of these areas, we recommend to visit the respective e-learning units on the Virtual Linguistics Campus. Here they are, phoneme and phonetic transcription, or to consult our e-lectures in this YouTube channel. Now, in particular the e-lectures about the phoneme and phonetic transcription. This background knowledge is necessary for the goals of this in-class meeting. The particular prerequisite for this in-class meeting is that students have worked through the unit the transcription of received pronunciation, including the e-lecture English in England in accordance with our inverted classroom model. As a starting point for this particular in-class meeting, I suggest to clarify the terminology that is used to define the standard pronunciation of the English language in England, the heartland of the English language. In doing this, I will be supported by a first term student of our seminar, Anina Eichmann. Hi, Anina. And Anina will, first of all, discuss with me the central definition. So, Anina, in defining this standard of the pronunciation of English in England, what sort of terms have you come across? Well, I've come across the term British English. Okay. Can you write it down and abbreviate English by a capital E? So British English is a term that is often used. Anything else? Yes, that's Oxford English and Queen's English. Okay. Now, while Anina is writing down these terms, let me say something about it. British English is a head term for the reference variety that we use in teaching and learning English. However, it mainly refers to the standards in orthography, in the syntax, in the anthropology, and in the vocabulary of English. So it is a head term rather than a term used for the pronunciation of English. Oxford English and Queen's English, well, Oxford English implies that this English is spoken in Oxford, isn't it? Well, and Queen's English implies that only the Queen uses it. So there are no suitable terms for the pronunciation of English. So rather we should use something else which is the term that is used is in fact called received pronunciation. Okay. Received pronunciation. Now, the term received pronunciation has for many years been used to refer to the type of English, which is the one that is accepted by the best society. RP is also the accent that Americans and possibly other foreigners would probably refer to as the typical British accent. Sometimes it is also referred to under the terms BBC English, public school English, or even standard English. So it is neither a regional nor a personal, but a socially accepted type of standard English. By the way, you can compare this with the standard accent that is used in your own country. We are both speakers of German. So in German, we have a similar situation where the standard is social rather than regional in character. Okay. After this first introduction to the term received pronunciation, let's now practice. And you know, you dealt with the e-learning unit. You should be familiar with it. You watched the video and you passed the graded worksheet by the way with an excellent result where you had to transcribe some RP words. And this is now our first practice. So I will produce some nonsense words. Nonsense words are always very good because they do not distract you from the orthography. Okay. So now here are the words in you. Please transcribe these words. Here is the first one. Do it. Do it. Okay. Next one is razz. Razz. Good. Then we have kind. Kind. The fourth one is should. Should. And the last one in this series is jock. Jock. Okay. So perhaps you have tried the same thing. You can now compare Annina's solutions with yours. And here are the model solutions. And as you can see, there are only, well, only two mistakes. I think the first one is of course where Annina used the wrong vowel here. This should be what you call this vowel. Oh, that's the schwa. The schwa. Okay. So schwa. And the second mistake. Well, there's no further mistake. Perfect. Good solution. So now this explains why she did the worksheet so well. And now let's take another series. Some longer, complex nonsense words. This is now very hard. And here is the first one. Castido. Castido. Castido. Yes. Annina is inserting a stress mark. You know, when words have several syllables, you have to use a stress mark. Castido. Okay. Again, you can try yourself and later we will look at the model solutions. Now here's number two. Tidge-theola. Tidge-theola. Tidge-theola. Looks good. Tidge-theola. Tidge-theola. And the last one is mostidor. Mostidor. Mostidor. Mostidor. Mostidor. Yes. Fantastic. Only one mistake I can see. Perhaps if you look at it, you can see yourself. This symbol here would be more. Mostidor. Oh. And it is not used in RP at all. So this would be the solution. Well, let's look at the solutions. Here they are. The rest is okay. Again, it's always useful if you address particular letters, particular letters. So this is a letter here which has a particular name, this symbol. Well, I think that's the wedge. The wedge. Okay. And earlier on in the previous exercise, we had this symbol. What is it called? That's the ash. The ash. So we have three characters which we can address by name. The wedge, the ash and the schwa. It's much simpler than to talk about transcription. Okay. Before we now turn our attention to the sound system of RP, let's repeat the differences between a narrow and a broad transcription. Here is a sentence I used in the e-lecture about the phoneme. Liz played with Paul. So let's transcribe this sentence in two versions, narrow and broad. Anina, how are these systems represented, first of all? Well, in the narrow system, you use the angular brackets. And here we use slashes. The slashes. Okay. Excellent. Now, Anina didn't know that I'm wiping this off because I prepared something, but it doesn't matter. So this is what I prepared. And here are, of course, the right brackets. So your answer was perfect. Now I want to make life a little bit simpler. In class, of course, I would do the whole thing, the transcription together with my students. So in both cases, we have some symbols that are absolutely identical. And these are the ones I represented in black here. Now, let us now write down the two different versions and let us look at the differences. Perhaps the lateral consonants first. So what about the first, let's look at the narrow transcription first. Yes. What about the first L as in Liz? Well, I think in Liz, it's no, well, so to say normal, because it's palatalized. Palatalized? Or yes, you use the symbol for palatalization. And if you compare that with the L in Paul, well, in alveolar lateral here, yeah. Paul, I think it's velarized. Velarized, very good. Okay, and then we have another alveolar lateral in plaid, which is preceded by per. Yes. So what about that one? Because per is devoiced, I think the L is also devoiced because it follows. Yes, okay. So you can add the per now in front of it, played. Okay. And then we have another per in Paul. What about that per? That per is aspirated. Okay, very good. And now we have, excluding the stress mark, Liz played with Paul, perhaps we can insert a stress mark here. We have a narrow transcription. And if we compare that with the broad phonemic transcription, we simply have the same symbol, the phoneme. Yes. We don't have yellow phones. Okay. Played with Paul. Perfect. So, Anina has understood the difference between narrow and broad transcription. I hope you too. So it is the broad phonemic transcription that is predominantly used for the transcription of RP. And the most popular one is the one used in John Wells' Longman pronouncing dictionary. And for this reason it is abbreviated as LPD transcription, Longman pronouncing dictionary transcription. So let us now turn our attention to the sound system of received pronunciation. Here it is. Let's first of all list the inventory itself. How many phonemes does RP have? RP has got 44 phonemes. 44 phonemes and they can be subdivided into vowels and consonants. 24. Okay, great. And now we only need the monophthongs and diphthongs. We've got 12 monophthongs and 8 diphthongs. Okay. Very good. So this is then really the inventory itself, the 44 phonemes. And since the next unit of this class will be about American English and the consonantal systems of both varieties of English are very much similar, let us concentrate on the vowels of RP first. Okay, Anina, how can the vowels of received pronunciation be subdivided? The monophthongs, sorry, the monophthongs. Well, I think we've got long and we've got short monophthongs. Okay. Now, length is a little bit critical, isn't it? Well, I don't think whether it really plays a role. Okay. And, okay, so she was a little bit informed about this, what we're doing now. So what I do in class at this point is I present the following four words. And here they are, see, see, sit, and sit. So let's listen. I recorded them. See, see, sit, sit. Now, Anina, the first two are normally transcribed with a long E, the E with a colon, and the second set with a short E. In hearing them, what would you say? Which one is the longest? Well, I think the longest is C. Okay. So that's our number one, the longest and the shortest? I think that's sit. Okay. And then number two and three would be? Well, I think like this. Okay. So this is what we all would probably say without performing a so-called spectrographic analysis, which you can find here. So what I did, I used an audio program in class, recorded the sounds and then showed this result to the students. And here you can clearly see in the frames which contain the vowels that now we have a different situation. Yes. This one is still the longest, but now there is that one. Sit is the second longest. Number three is seat, and number four is sit. And now you can see that strictly speaking, length is not a decisive factor at all. Rather, it is a matter of tense versus lax or a distribution. For example, most of the short vowels, and this is a distributional effect, most of the short vowels only occur in close syllables. That is, they need a consonant that has to follow. The schwa occurs in unstressed position, and the E is a little bit critical. There's a language change going on where many people would now say city instead of city. But we still use the length mark? Yes, we do. And why? Well, it is perhaps a special indicator for the prolongation of vowels which is useful for the language learner. After all, there are many languages which do not have long vowels at all. So if you're learning English and you see these length symbols, you might be tempted to make them longer, and that's not too bad for the language learner. Okay, the diphthongs. Here are the eight diphthongs. How can we subdivide these diphthongs? Well, we've got in-gliding and up-gliding diphthongs. Okay, can you mark the in-gliding ones? Yes, I think these three. Okay, so these are the in-gliding diphthongs. Now, some students often complain about all this terminology. Why do I have to remember all these terms? But these terms help in a systematic classification of the sound systems of languages. In the case of RP diphthongs, we can say that the whole class doesn't exist in American English. Why not? Well, I think that are the in-gliding ones because they can all be found in context with the final orthographical R. And in American English this comes out as a monophthong plus r. So here we have some words. Here, there, and sure. In British English with an in-gliding diphthong in American English, here, there, and sure. Okay. Now, the final part of this session should be dedicated to the discussion of transcription, to practicing. A good exercise would be this one here where you present your students a transcription result that contains a lot of mistakes and these mistakes can be of a formal kind. So, for example, and I leave that to you, we are not giving the solution here, perhaps just the headline. The headline contains some mistakes. So are four-lettered friends? Where are the main mistakes, Alina? Well, I think because as you just have said, the R isn't there in the received pronunciation. So we get rid of that. Yes. And here has to be the schwa, I think. Great. Lettered. Yes. And this is normal e. Friends. Yeah. Epsilon is not used in RP. Okay. I think here... We need angst, Marc. Yes. Our four-lettered friends. Sometimes we have trouble writing here, but we all know it must be this vowel in the first case. So are four-lettered friends? Well, and you can do the rest at home. Finally, depending on the time you have in class, you could present your students with a transcription exercise, give them a text, give them five minutes, let them do the transcription, and eventually show them the result. And of course, they can do the rest at home then, continue at home, and this could be a nice homework too, you know, according to the inverted classroom model, you don't have real homeworks, we do everything in class. Okay, let's summarize. Well, after this in-class meeting, and the e-learning unit, the sound system of RP prior to it, everyone should not only be able to list and classify the RP phonemes, but also to transcribe RP words in simple phrases. The transcription of connected speech might still be a problem, but that does not matter at this point. We will tackle that in the unit, in the English connected speech, and in the respective e-lecture. So let us stop here, but not without reminding the students to finish the last two tasks, the corrections of errors, and the completion of the transcription. The solutions, by the way, can be found on the Virtual Linguistics Campus. So thank you all for your patience. Thank you very much, Anina, for your support. Cheers. Cheers, she said. That's bye-bye in German. Okay, that's it for now.